Florida’s ban on abortions after 6 weeks takes effect
Legislation also spurs concern that veteran doctors may leave the Republican-led state.
BOCA RATON, Fla. — Florida’s ban on most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant, went into effect Wednesday, and some doctors are concerned that women in the state will no longer have access to needed healthcare.
Dr. Leah Roberts, a reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist with Boca Fertility in Boca Raton, said the antiabortion laws being enacted by Florida and other red states are being vaguely written by people who don’t understand medical science. The rules are affecting not just women who want therapeutic abortions, meaning procedures to terminate viable pregnancies because of personal choice, but also nonviable pregnancies for women who want to have babies.
“We’re coming in between them and their doctors and preventing them from getting care until it’s literally saving their lives, sometimes at the expense of their fertility,” Roberts said.
The new ban has an exception for saving a woman’s life as well as in cases involving rape and incest, but Roberts said healthcare workers are still prevented from performing an abortion on a nonviable pregnancy that they know may become deadly — such as when the fetus is missing organs or implanted outside the uterus — until it does become deadly.
“We’re being told that we have to wait until the mother is septic to be able to intervene,” she said.
Besides the physical danger, there’s also the psychological trauma of having to carry a fetus that the mother knows will never be a healthy baby, Roberts said.
“They’re feeling the kicks for months after they’re being told that they’re never going to have a live birth,” she said. “And it’s just horrifying when you could take care of it at 20 weeks, and they could move on, and they could get pregnant with their next pregnancy and be able to hold their babies that much sooner.”
The Biden campaign quickly blamed the “extreme” six-week ban on former President Trump.
“Trump is worried the voters will hold him accountable for the cruelty and chaos he created. He’s right. Trump ripped away the rights and freedom of women in America. This November, voters are going to teach him a valuable lesson: Don’t mess with the women of America,” President Biden said in a statement.
Vice President Kamala Harris also criticized the sixweek ban during an event Wednesday in Jacksonville.
“Because of Donald Trump, more than 20 states have abortion bans,” Harris said. “And today, this very day, at the stroke of midnight, another Trump abortion ban went into effect here in Florida. As of this morning, 4 million women in this state woke up with fewer reproductive freedoms than they had last night.”
Roberts said a huge issue with the ban is that the doctors who perform emergency abortions have to learn the procedures by performing therapeutic abortions. So if most abortions are banned, the next generation of doctors won’t be able to develop the skills needed to perform an emergency abortion.
Roberts said she is concerned the restrictions will also prompt veteran doctors to leave Florida, as they have in other states that have enacted abortion bans.
“We’re going to have less access to care for our general population, even if it’s just basic maternity care and normal OB-GYN care, because people are leaving,” Roberts said.
In addition, women are going to have to travel far from home to get abortions. Florida Access Network Executive Director Stephanie Piñeiro said the organization, which helps provide funding for abortions, expects costs to increase dramatically. She estimates it will cost around $3,000 for a woman to travel to another state for an abortion. The closest place after 12 weeks would be Virginia or Illinois, but before 12 weeks would be North Carolina.
“It’s very emotionally draining and challenging to deal with these types of barriers and have to leave your home,” Piñeiro said.
The Florida Supreme Court, with five of its seven members appointed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, ruled 6 to 1 last month to uphold the state’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, which cleared the way for the sixweek ban. The 15-week ban, signed by DeSantis in 2022, had been enforced while it was challenged in court. The six-week ban was written so that it would not take effect until a month after the 2022 law was upheld.
Republican state Sen. Erin Grall, who sponsored the six-week ban, previously said bodily autonomy should not include abortions. “We live in a time where the consequences of our actions are an afterthought and convenience has been substitution for responsibility,” Grall said, “and this is unacceptable when it comes to the protection of the most vulnerable.”
Voters may be able to enshrine abortion rights in the Florida Constitution after a separate state Supreme Court ruling allowed a proposed constitutional amendment to be on the November ballot.